My Dog Hank Taught Me About the Golden Rule

My dog, Hank, has taught me a lot of things. Just by owning a dog, I get to learn little life lessons here and there and I always love passing them on to you. Hank has taught me to have more patience. Hank has taught me about simplicity in life and, as you may know, he taught me about having unshakeable faith. Just the other day, I learned a new lesson from Hank and it was a very valuable lesson.

What Hank is teaching me is how to be a good master. That’s very important in a dog’s life. In fact, the way you behave as a master affects every aspect of your dog’s life. If you are an inattentive master, your dog will probably misbehave a lot. If you are an attentive and loving master, your pet and your relationship with that pet will be healthy and that will bring both you and your pet a lot of pleasure. Hank wags his tail a lot and I intend to keep it that way.

So, what has Hank taught me about God? Well, maybe I should be in a home for the criminally obvious, but it’s simply this: By understanding how to be a good master to my dog, I am slowly beginning to learn about how God is the perfect master. The real secret I’ve learned has been around forever. It’s something that you’ve heard all your life, but perhaps the full weight of the old sayings truth has escaped you. I know it had escaped me.

That old saying is, of course, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” It applies to every single person you know in your life and it applies to even your pets. It’s basically how God treats us, now isn’t it? He treats us with love and all he expects in turn is love. Hank brings me a lot of happiness and all he expects in return is love.

AS a master, I want my subject, Hank, to love me. The more I am a good master, the more Hank loves me. Compare that with your life with God and you’ll see it works exactly the same way. Just as we love our pets and want only the best for them. So God wishes the same for us. Notice I didn’t say “what we want.” Hank “wants” people food, but I don’t feed him people food. It’s what he wants, but it’s not what he need and, of course, we can get anything and everything we need from God.

Finally, Hank has taught me that I need very little to be happy. He, of course, wants his food and water. Other than that Hank asks for nothing but love. Hank’s big thing is being loved on. That’s really all he asks for.

Let’s take a lesson from Hank and realize that, just like God is the perfect master, we are called upon to be perfect masters to all under our domain. Expand this out to everyone you deal with and the next thing you know, you just might find that you are a better person because of it. Believe it or not, people will notice and that, too, will make you happy.